Kate Tulp: ServiceNow NZ Country Manager on the phone wait times increasing

Kiwis are spending more and more time stuck on hold. 

For the third year in a row, ServiceNow’s Annual Customer Experience Report has seen phone wait times worsen.  

Last year, it’s estimated Kiwis spent 24 million hours on hold – approximately 9.7 hours per person.  

ServiceNow NZ Country Manager Kate Tulp told Mike Hosking the best space in 2024 was the transport space, while financial services and government lines have room for improvement.  

She says they’re seeing more customers choosing to engage with a digital method over a phone call when they’re available.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This will come as no surprise at all. For a
third year in a row, Service Now's annual customer experience
shows wait times on phones are getting worse. Last year
it was estimated we spend about twenty four million hours
on hold, which is nine point seven hours per person.
Service now is country manager Kate Tulp is with there's Kate,
good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Do you split these things? Do you split in between
local and international companies?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Look, we don't. We definitely survey by industry. We look
at the different market segments and who's performing in different spaces.
That no, we don't look at global and.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
No good because that was my next question. What are
there where are there areas that are specifically and obviously
bad or not?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I think there's definitely the people who get the most
improved and the opportunities for improvement awards. Look, the best
space in twenty twenty four has definitely been the transport space,
so bas rail, ride share type places providing the best
kind of customer service. Most improved goes to household and utilities,
you know, so like our electricity companies, et cetera. But
room for improvement financial services, so banking and insurance and government,

(00:59):
which is upsety government.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
No surprise, government aren't performing. They hired all those public
service and none of them could answer the phone. Who
would have thought?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Having said that, I've come to the conclusion, as a
pun to myself, that they don't care, that they can't
be bothered putting the resource, and they don't want to
spend the money and at the end of the day,
no one's actually going to do anything about it. Would
that be fair or not? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Look, I don't think anybody sits out to design something
that is completely annoying. It doesn't work. But what I
do think is we're seeing in the research is that
where customers are choosing to engage with a digital method,
if it's been provided to them so like a chatbot
or an aipowered agent or an online app or something,
they'd definitely seen a faster response time. And so as
my mum used to say to me, put down the phone.
That is definitely the fastest way to engage me.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Now that's interesting because my chatbot experience and generally if
it becomes complicated, they drop offline. So in other words,
they say how do I help, and I ask a question,
they come back with an answer and then when they
can't help me, they just disappear. Do you notice that.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
I've certainly had that experience myself. I get pretty frustrated
because we at service now know when we see the
tech and we know that it's possible to not have
that kind of experience. So absolutely, those are the old chatbots.
Those are the you know, the ones from ten years ago.
But AI powered agents are different, you know, like the
work that we see. For example, our customer, Southern Cross Insurance,
they've deployed an AI powered agent to resolve requests. They've

(02:15):
got a twenty four x seven service desk running now
and they've delivered a ninety nine percent satisfactionting that is
customer for life territory. That's the difference between putting new
shoes on an old horse and redesigning for a rocket. Yeah,
you know old chatbot yep.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Do you do offshore on shore in terms of you know, yes,
local company but they're in the Philippines or not.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
We support a broad range of companies, you know, doing
all sorts of things you know on offshore, local New
Zealand businesses, New Zealand government. You know, it's a broad
range of customers that we support. But the key thing
that we see across all of them is that those
who are prepared to engage in investing in technology are
providing a significantly better customer experience, and those are the
ones that you want to take a look at.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Fantastic Kate Appreciated, Kate Top Servers now New Zealand Country Manager.
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